Wednesday, 27 March 2013

Sydney is killing it at the moment! Nearly a full month through autumn and we're still cracking the 30 degree days. Makes me a happy fella.

The latest Stripped & Chewed 12 has this really awesome cut by Simba. A Chicago locomotive that rolls along in dusty sepia, it's a bumping jazzy collage made up of keyboard trills, a mish-mash of hazy percussion snips, various guitar twangs, a tight bass loop and some cut up soulful man-vocals. All four tunes on the record are worth checking out, but this is the highlight for sure.

Geography Records fucking rule the shit out of house, even if their release rate is about rapid as ours is with Death Strobe. This latest Shakarchi & Straneus record is just stunning. Simple and fun and lovely - the A1 is just straight up feel good synthy house that nobody can argue with, and this song, the A2, is a beautiful paddy dream capsule which somehow feels really melodic despite having the most bare of piano melodies lightly tinkering away, almost lost in a sea of reverb. Real Cool - U Know, U Know was one of my favourite records of last year, and Geography have really hit the mark again early on in 2013.

Christoph El Truento is still a bloody dreamboat. He released this fantastic free album back in Feb, which apparently was finished years earlier, and it's been the soundtrack to many a recline-on-my-bed-with-breeze-blowing-through-the-window-sometimes-drinking-a-coconut moment. He keeps hassling people on his FB about voting for him in a Kiwi competition that will make him lots of money or something, just go here and click vote and make that dude rich.

A stone cold classic from 10 or 15 years back by DJ Nature under the name DJ Spearchucker. Can't actually remember where I first heard this edit but I've always been extremely fond of it. It's really gentle and warm, just grooving away over the same understated, perfect loop with emotional vocals and strings weaving in and out. There's no real origin or destination, just a beautiful limbo that keeps chugging away. Not an easy record to find, so if anyone sees it pop up on Discogs' marketplace, fuck off and just let me buy it k? Ta.

Friday, 22 March 2013

Shit alright I've got 18 months worth of stuff that needs posting so I'd better start getting through some of it for you chumpies. There's no freshness in this lot, but this is after all a Blogger page and freshness has no place on Blogger. Let's begin the Bloody Beetroots Greatest Hits Top 1000 Countdown shall we?

That guy Jimpster. He is definitely no joke. Remember that time he had that label, Delusions of Grandeur? That was cool. How about Freerange? Decent. Who here remembers the time he made cheekily made music as Franc Spangler and had me going all like "who is this dude wtffff" and then it was like "ahh it's old mate Jimpo" and the mystery was solved? Yes, we've established that he's been one of the koolest producers around for about 600 years now, and this remix he did for Patchworks way back in the 2005s is still a hot little potato. Super smooth gliding loungey grooves with poppy percussion and slick bass slides all over the shop. Hot tip.

This is what it sounds like when a woman is being powerful and you put a microphone in front of her and she tramples your testicles with her sweet funky song. Got a real thing for this track - great chorus, killer horns section, ripping vocals. Onya Viola Willis.

I've been working on a chiptune feature over the past few weeks and Omri Suleiman is definitely one of the coolest, most original cats I've come across. That this was created with a Commodore Amiga is massively impressive. Driving wobbing bass, amazing complex rhythms chaotically clattering all over the place, with brief lofty interludes offering a momentary break from the mayhem. Go have a listen to his album, 'Music For A 15 Year Old Me' at this rad purpose-built website, the dude is obviously crazy talented, I'm super eager to hear what he follows this up with.

I've been salivating over Germany's Max Graef for months now. He's been doing stuff with Melbourne Deepcast dawg Andy Hart, amongst other people, and he fits beautifully into the Melbs family. This is my favourite cut of his, released on the über-awesome Box Aus Holz - to me it's got a real Raw Cuts vibe to it with great samples, stripped back arrangement, insanely hip beat complete with finger clicks (which in my mind are terribly underutilised in dance music) all wrapped up in a neat Detroit flavoured package. This dude is doing some seriously good shit at the moment, get on it!

Been listening to a lot of Galapagoose in the past 12 months, since his debut LP came out on Daedalus' Magical Properties imprint almost exactly a year ago. Another Melbourne studio whiz, he makes fantastic weird beats with plenty of diversity. Some floaty melodic stuff, some dark weighty stuff, some playful poppy stuff, some really textural paddy stuff, always so well produced. Here are a couple of my faves: the first track of the album, which shows off the more sprightly side of his music, and a track off his earlier Parquet EP which is a bit moodier.

Monday, 18 March 2013

How's everyone doing? Happy new year I guess. Just a pinch of news for Sydney folks - will be putting on a Disco Delicious night some time in May after a solid four years of procrastination. I don't have a date yet, so just keep the entire month free. Birthdays, weddings, whatever: make sure they're all priority number two.

So it's been a little while, sorry about that. For ages and ages I've been planning to put together a jazz-focused Delishcast but never got around to properly preparing it. Had a few drinks one night and started recording this mix with the intention of drafting up something jazzy, but that lasted all of two songs. Instead, this turned out to be pretty much an approximation of all my club sets over the past 18 months - it's not well mixed or put together, but it's very me. Every one of these records is in my bag permanently, I'll never get tired of any of them. Hope ya dig!